Toronto Home-Sales Decline Highlights Canadian Slowdown

Feb. 5 (Bloomberg) -- The Toronto real estate market is
showing signs of cooling to start the year as January sales
dropped 2.2 percent to the lowest for that month since 2009.

Home sales in the nation’s largest housing market fell to
4,135 units from 4,229 units a year earlier, the Toronto Real
Estate Board said today in a statement, citing a 17 percent drop
in new listings. Average sales prices in the city rose 9.2
percent to C$526,528 ($475,000), the board said.

“It’s possible that strong price growth, and therefore an
increase in home equity, will act as a trigger for more
households to list their homes for sale,” Dianne Usher,
president of Toronto’s real estate board, said in the statement.

Canada’s housing market has been slowing. National existing
home sales dropped for three consecutive months to end 2013,
fueling expectations that real estate has ceased to be a
catalyst for economic growth. The Bank of Canada forecast last
month housing won’t add to output in 2014. The nation’s
statistics agency reported a surprise drop in building permits
for December today, the second straight decline.

The total value of purchases in six major Canadian real
estate markets rose 19 percent to C$5.09 billion in January
compared with the same month a year earlier, and the number of
homes sold rose 7.3 percent, according to data compiled by
Bloomberg News from regional real estate boards. In both cases,
that’s less than half the annual pace in December.

Home sales in Vancouver, Canada’s second largest real
estate market by value, grew 30 percent last month, the city’s
real estate board reported yesterday. That compares with a 71
percent increase in December.